Rosanne Cash Quotes

I have daughters who are writers and actors but no musicians.

Southern gentility is evocative to me.

There's always that moment when you realize what it's going to be. You might have an overarching theme and you need to fill in the blanks - and then there's this "Aha" moment when you see where it's going. That's the most satisfying part of writing.

With time the unbearable becomes shocking, becomes sad, and finally becomes poignant.

I choose not to give energy to the emotions of revenge, hatred or the desire to subjugate.

I was a songwriter; that was the torch I carried. This is an honorable profession. This is what I do.

You stand in front of a great painting and your heart just opens and your mind expands about what's possible. That, to me, is a connection to what God is.

When I was eleven I stopped dreaming the dreams that didn't come true, I stopped talking to people who didn't listen, I lost hope and I retreated. I assumed that the root of the problem was that I was too strange for the real world. That being the case, I created a charming and dynamic personality to make the necessary forays into the Outside, and I kept my strangeness for myself; my own peculiar jewels under lock and key.

Just a thank you is a mighty powerful prayer. Says it all.

I'm a songwriter. My voice just serves what I'm writing about. So to let all that go, I mean, bring the sensibilities of it actually to the song choices, but to just be the interpreter was incredibly liberating and really fun.

My dad had more compassion than me. He was nonjudgmental. He didn't care where you stood politically. He just took you as a person on face value. He could love all stripes, and that's why all stripes claim him. He didn't judge.

Well, the first year I lost my voice I didn't mind so much because I was going to have a baby and I was distracted with him anyway, I didn't even think about it that much, well, OK, this is what's happening.

And I kind of said to myself if I get my voice back I'm not going to take back the old anxiety about it and just focus on the limitations. I'm really going to enjoy it.

I gave up language for a while, and I started painting.And then I only listened to Miles Davis and other instrumental music to see how it felt to be without words.

For me, art is a more trustworthy expression of God than religion.

I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn't sing.

The ephemeral nature of live performance is the part I love most - it's a monk's sand painting, carefully constructed, then wiped away in an instant.

The religion I have is music. Even the times I have headaches, when I'm singing, I can't feel them. My dad used to say that, too, especially near the end of his life. He would be in pain - a lot of pain - and he said the only time when he didn't feel pain was when he performed and sang.

If I ignore my work, I start having anxiety attacks.

And I don't think that success is going to destroy me at this point in my life, like I used to think.

Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.

I think that my sensitivity to music has actually deepened and expanded as I've gotten older. You add more life experience.

Work ... is redemption.

But there's nothing that gives me more thrill than when I'm writing and a couplet works. I find the right rhyme, or it's just perfect. There's nothing that exciting.

On the plane, an eight-year-old with an excess of testosterone keeps running across my feet. Finally I grab him by his T-shirt and say, very sweetly, 'Listen, darling, if you don't stop trampling me I'm going to make you sit on my lap while I tell you my entire life story. Including a lot of details about drug rehab and my divorce.' He goes back to his seat.

It was never too late to undo who you had become.

It's a little dangerous for me to get outside myself and think about how I want people to see me.

I don't do comparisons because I always lose.

It is the people who scream the loudest about America and Freedom who see to be the most intolerant for a differing point of view.

For the first time in 23 years I'm enjoying the process of supporting it, of going out and doing shows, and doing the interviews, and doing everything.

As I started writing about loss and grief, I was taking what felt unmanageable and using my songwriting, my sense of poetry and discipline, to try and make it manageable.

I needed to carve out my own place and find out what I was going to do